Girl, 13, spent week on boat with her mother’s strangler

AN NHS worker strangled his partner on a Norfolk Broads holiday cruiser before dumping her naked body in the water, an inquest heard yesterday.

John Didier killed himself after strangling his partner on board their hired boat on the River Bure

John Didier, 41, killed Annette Creegan, 49, on the first night of their holiday while her 13-year-old daughter was asleep on the boat.

American Didier then spent a week with the teenager on the hired boat before drowning himself.

The body of hospice nurse Ms Creegan was found in the River Bure on the Broads last September.

Mr Didier told her that Annette had left. She had no access to a mobile telephone and no means of getting off the boat

Det Cons Christina Stone

Didier’s body was found nearby. He drowned himself by tying dumbbells to his body and jumping overboard, Norwich Coroner’s Court heard.

A police search was launched after a river worker found Ms Creegan’s daughter alone on the boat moored near isolated Salhouse Broad.

The girl told officers they had arrived for a holiday on August 25 and the following day she woke to find her mother gone.

Det Cons Christina Stone told the inquest: “Mr Didier told her that Annette had left. She had no access to a mobile telephone and no means of getting off the boat.

“Six days later she woke up and there was no sign of Mr Didier.”

His body was found on September 1, weighted down with dumbbells tied to his feet and wrists.

Ms Creegan’s naked body was found in the water nearby the following afternoon. Her hands had been tied, she was weighted down with a 66 lb dumbbell, and she had been strangled.

Det Insp Gary Bloomfield said: “I’m confident in saying John Didier had killed Annette and then taken his own life a number of days later.”

Didier’s motive remained unclear.

On the night of her mother’s death, the girl slept undisturbed and did not hear any argument.

There was no evidence she or Didier left the boat following Ms Creegan’s death and no one else had been on board. The boat had been stocked with food.

Didier bought the weights and cable ties with the intention of murdering Ms Creegan, with whom he had lived in Mitcham, Surrey, said Mr Bloomfield.

Coroner William Armstrong recorded that Ms Creegan was unlawfully killed, and that Didier later committed suicide. He added: “What a grotesque irony that this happened in the idyllic setting of the Norfolk Broads.”

Ms Creegan worked for a hospice at Clapham Common, south-west London. Didier, from Ohio, had worked in IT for the NHS but was unemployed at the time.